Four-year Combined Bachelor’s and Master’s Program

The Cronkite School’s BA/MMC program gives honors students at ASU the opportunity to complete their bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism in just four years. Only one other major U.S. journalism school — Northwestern University’s Medill School — offers such a program.

The program is open to high-performing freshmen in ASU’s Barrett, the Honors College, who are majoring in journalism. Because students who are admitted to the Honors College as first-time freshman have already completed, on average, 22 credit hours of college-level coursework, by taking specially designated classes and completing an accelerated course of study, students can obtain both their Bachelor of Arts and Master of Mass Communication degrees in the time it normally takes to complete an undergraduate degree.

Students in the program will take a mix of Cronkite School graduate and undergraduate classes, with many of the undergraduate classes offered as honors-only sections.

To be accepted, students must meet the Cronkite School’s admissions standards for freshmen and be accepted into Barrett, the Honors College. Students should indicate their interest in pursuing the integrated degree when they apply to the honors college and choose journalism as their major.

The Cronkite School and Barrett, the Honors College, are two of ASU’s most prestigious programs, with many of the university’s best and brightest students. In fact, the Cronkite School has a higher percentage of honors students than any other college or school at the university.

Cronkite School undergraduates get a broad-based liberal arts education and a professional journalism education that prepares them for careers in print media, digital media, broadcast and public relations. The school is nationally recognized, with students finishing in the top 10 in all major collegiate journalism competitions. The school recently revamped its master’s program, creating an innovative, 15-month, full-time professional program that teaches journalistic skills, values and principles while preparing students for the 21st-century media environment.

The honors college is recognized as one of the best in the nation, boasting more National Merit Scholars than Princeton, Yale or Stanford. Reader’s Digest named Barrett as one of three U.S. honors colleges that offer “an Ivy League-style education minus the sticker shock.”